MLB Power Rankings Week 6: AL East and NL West Lead the Way

Expect to see a lot more of this in 2010.

The Rays and Yankees are continuing their assault on the record books. So do the Pirates, albeit for a different reason—the Rays and Pirates are currently projected to finish with almost perfectly opposite records, at 123-39 and 38-124 (WOW). This much we already knew, so rather than focusing on each team’s position this week, let’s take a look at how each division stacks up so far.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the AL East is the best division in baseball right now. The Rays and Yankees are comfortably leading the league, but the Toronto Blue Jays aren’t doing so badly themselves, checking in at #11. The Baltimore Orioles are the only truly awful team in the division and look headed for a 50-win season.

What may surprise you, however, is that the NL West is a close second. Long reviled as a joke of a division, the NL West actually has two teams in the top six and three in the top eight. The Colorado Rockies were a popular World Series pick during the offseason, but few saw the Padres and Giants contending this year. San Diego actually leads the division after an abysmal season last year, and are on track to win over 100 games this year at their current pace. The Arizona Diamondbacks are holding back the division as the only team not in the top 15. Pretty impressive stuff.

Coming in third is the NL East, as you might expect. The Philadelphia Phillies lead the division and are third in the power rankings, but the surprising New York Mets are nipping at their heels with Atlanta and Florida not far off. Even the Washington Nationals, a doormat so perennially awful that I named the lowest division of the rankings after them two years ago, are holding their own. Like the NL West, the East has four teams in the top 15, which is no mean feat. Expect great things here.

The AL Central and AL West are in a dead heat for fourth. The Central has one team in the top 5 (the surprising Minnesota Twins), but three teams in the bottom ten, which more than cancels that out. The West isn’t nearly so top-heavy, but doesn’t have any truly terrible teams, either (only Seattle is in the bottom ten at #23). No, this division seems content to be mediocre. Texas checks in at #9, the lowest position in the power rankings for a division leader and outside the ranks of the contenders.

Bringing up the rear is the NL Central. St. Louis leads the way, as you would expect, but no other Central teams are even in the top 15. In fact, two NL Central teams occupy spots #29 and #30. Currently, the Cardinals are the only team projected to even finish with a winning record. It’s a good time to be a Cardinals fan, but if you’re a baseball fan and not from St. Louis, you may want to consider becoming a fan of the American League.

Oh, and one disclaimer about the numbers: it’s still very early in the season. With nearly 80% of the games yet to be played, we’re still looking at a small sample size, and thus some skewed numbers. While the simulator currently projects the Rays to break the all-time wins record, we’ll probably see their numbers regress toward the mean over the coming months. Still, this is an interesting way of looking at the league, if nothing else, for right now.

The numbers